We acquired this fascinating piece of Connecticut-iana at the recent antiquarian book fair in New York City.  It is a 36-page scientific workbook by Robert Pierpont Cunningham (1782-1867), a mechanic and inventor from Pomfret, CT.  He was the son of Peter Cunningham, a retired sea captain, and Elizabeth Pierpont Cunningham, daughter of a wealthy Boston family.

The manuscript begins with notes on experimental theorems, chemistry, varnish, life boat design, mechanics, laws of motion, and optics, among others. Drawings and remarks on steam engines and calculations related to how ships see each other over the horizon are shown here.  Cunningham cites his sources (Isaac Newton and Erasmus Darwin are among them) and conducts his own experiments.  He seems to have been an active inventor, having patented at least four inventions between 1808 – 1945: a cider press machine, steering helm machine, and two different looms.

One of my favorite types of material are handbooks for working people.  At the recent New York Book Fair I picked up five of these from a New Jersey dealer with whom I have done business for years.  I was delighted that they were in excellent condition and rather inexpensive.  I will let the titles and Preface excerpts of three of them speak for themselves:

A New Conductor Generalis: Being a Summary of the Law Relative to the Duty and Office of Justices of the Peace, Sherriffs, Coroners, Constables, Jurymen, Overseers of the Poor, &c. (New York: Albany, 1803).  “Although it cannot be supposed that a complete system of criminal jurisprudence could be comprised in the following number of pages, yet it will be found that very few cases can arise, subject to an interference of the law, or any of its officers, for which the necessary instructions are not herein pointed out” (Preface).  A nice Early Republic edition of a classic legal manual (the first American edition was 1711, and English editions under the title A Guide for Constables go back to 1669).

A similar work is John B. Colvin’s A Magistrate’s Guide; and Citizen’s Counsellor: Being a Digested Abstract of those Laws of the State of Maryland [etc.] (Maryland: Frederick-Town, 1805).  This is the first printing of an early Maryland legal guide, written, says the author, for the average citizen, in part to protect him from “the impositions of the dishonest part of the bar.”

From the Introduction, “An occasional attendance upon our courts of justice, where I have often witnessed a lamentable want of legal information among that class of citizens who constitute the major part of the community, together with a strong recommendation of a friend, originally induced me to undertake the present composition.”

Departing from law and moving on to commerce, Joseph Blunt’s The Merchant’s and Shipmaster’s Assistant (New York, 1832) is a later edition of this guide, which contains information of every kind, from exchange rates to insurance, and from wreck laws to shipboard crime.

The Preface contains a highly articulate overview of the state of U.S. trade, stating that “its numerous and excellent harbours, and salubrity of climate, the freedom of its institutions, and the equality and justice of its laws, designate it as the natural depot and place of exchange of the manufactures of the old world for the productions of the new.  In that trade it will be enabled by its extensive and fertile territory, to take part as the rival of the South American states in the exchange with Europe; and the industry and the ingenuity of its citizens, the possession of raw materials, and its capabilities as a manufacturing nation, will enable it with equal ease to rival the European powers, in supplying the South American continent with manufactures.”

We recently acquired just over 100 British and American plays dating from 1697 to 1880.  Aside from works by canonical authors like Shakespeare, Dryden, Congreve, Sheridan, and Voltaire, there are farces, comedies and tragedies by authors like Isaac Bickerstaff (“The Romp”, “The Adopted Child”, “Love in the City”), George Colman (“The Clandestine Marriage”, “Love Laughs at Locksmiths”, “The Mountaineers”), Hannah Cowley (“A Bold Stroke for a Husband”, “The Runaway”, “Which is the Man?”), Elizabeth Inchbald (“Everyone Has His Fault”, “I’ll Tell You What”, “The Wedding Day”), and Arthur Murphy (“The Apprentice”, “Desert Island”, “Know Your Own Mind”, The Orphan of China”).

“This beautiful little hawk appears to be nearly allied to the European Hobby (Falco Subbuteo, Linn.) and is not inferior to that species in spirit and activity.  I procured the individual represented, in April 1812, near Flatland Ford in Pennsylvania, whilst in pursuit of a Dove, which it would doubtless have secured, had I not terminated its career.  When I first discovered this species, the individual was standing perched on an old fence-stake, in the position in which it is figured.  Never having met with another of its kind, I conclude that it is extremely rare in the United States.  Of its nest or young I am unable to say anything at present.

The name which I have given to this new and rare species was chosen at the time when Napoleon Le Grand was in the zenith of his glory.  Every body knows that his soldiers frequently designated him by the nickname of Le Petit Caporal, which I thought more suitable to our little Hawk, than the names Napoleon or Bonaparte, which I should have adopted, had I been so fortunate as to procure a new Eagle.

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 381 [excerpted].

[Curator’s note: this bird is actually a Merlin]

“The Indigo Bird arrives in the Southern States from the direction of Mexico, along with its relative the Painted Finch, and is caught in trap-cages, but with more difficulty than the latter bird.  It spreads far and wide over the United States, extending from the borders of our Atlantic shores to those of our great lakes.  It is not a forest bird, but prefers the skirts of the woods, the little detached thickets in and along the fields, the meadows, the gardens, and orchards, and is frequently seen hopping along, or perched on a fence, from which is does not disdain to send forth its pretty little song . . .

I have represented an adult female, two young males of the first and second year, in autumn, and a male in the full beauty of its plumage.  They are placed on a plant usually called the Wild Sarsparilla.”

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 377-379 [excerpted].

“Kind reader, you now see before you my greatest favourite of the feathered tribes of our woods.  To it I owe much.  How often has it revived my drooping spirits, when I have listened to its wild notes in the forest, after passing a restless night in my slender shed, so feebly secured against the violence of the storm, as to shew me the futility of my best efforts to rekindle my little fire, whose uncertain and vacillating light had gradually died away under the destructive weight of the dense torrents of rain that seemed to involve the heavens and the earth in one mass of fearful murkiness, save when the red streaks of the flashing thunderbolt burst on the dazzled eye, and, glancing along the huge trunk of the stateliest and noblest tree in my immediate neighbourhood, were instantly followed by an uproar of crackling, crashing, and deafening sounds, rolling their volumes in tumultuous eddies far and near, as if to silence the very breathings of the unformed thought!”

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 372 [excerpted].

“They always feed on the wing.  In calm and warm weather, they soar to an immense height, pursuing the large insects called Musquito Hawks, and performing the most singular evolutions that can be conceived, using their tail with an elegance of motion peculiar to themselves.  Their principal food, however, is large grasshoppers, grass-caterpillars, small snakes, lizards, and frogs.  They sweep close over the fields, sometimes seeming to alight for a moment to secure a snake, and holding it fast by the neck, carry it off, and devour it in the air.  When searching for grasshoppers and caterpillars, it is not difficult to approach them under cover of a fence or tree.  When one is then killed and falls to the ground, the whole flock comes over the dead bird, as if intent upon carrying it off.  An excellent opportunity is thus afforded of shooting as many as may be wanted, and I have killed several of these Hawks in this manner, firing as fast as I could load my gun.”

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 369 [excerpted].

“Every species of bird is possessed of a certain, not always definable, cast of countenance, peculiar to itself.  Although it undergoes changes necessary for marking the passions of the individual, its joy, its anger, its terror or despondency, still it remains the same specific look.  Hawks are perhaps more characteristically marked in this manner than birds of any other genus, being by nature intended for deeds of daring enterprise, and requiring a greater perfection of sight to enable them to distinguish their prey at great distances.  To most persons the family-look of particular species does not appear so striking as to the student of nature, who examines her productions in the haunts which she has allotted to them.  He perceives at a glance the differences of species, and when he has once bent his attention to an object, can distinguish it at distances which to the ordinary observer present merely a moving object, whether beast or bird.  When years of constant observation have elapsed, it becomes a pleasure to him to establish the differences that he has found to exist among the various species of a tribe, and to display to others whose opportunities have been more limited the fruits of his research.”

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 364 [excerpted].

“I obtained the bird represented in this plate opposite Cincinnati, in the State of Kentucky, in the year 1820, whilst in the company of Mr. ROBERT BEST, then Curator of the Western Museum. It was on the ground, amongst tall grass, and exhibited the usual habits of its tribe. Perceiving it to be different from any which I had seen, I immediately shot it, and the same day made an accurate drawing of it.

In naming it after the Rev. Professor HENSLOW of Cambridge, a gentleman so well known to the scientific world, my object has been to manifest my gratitude for the many kind attentions which he has shewn towards me. Its history and habits are unknown.  In appearance it differs so little from the Buntings, that, for the present, I shall refer to that genus.”

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 358 [excerpted].